ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses changes in the general principles and basic ideas of reality which explicitly or implicitly underlie every philosophy, science, and important theory. These principles relating to the nature of the ultimate reality are determinism and indeterminism, absolutism and relativism, eternalism and temporalism, and the like. The nature of reality, particularly of the ultimate reality, has always constituted one of these first principles. By Materialism is meant that philosophy which holds that the ultimate reality is matter, and that spiritual or immaterial phenomena are but a manifestation of it, are simply the result of the motion of particles of matter. Of the many varieties of Materialism, there are two which are most important. The observed association of the truth of faith and partly of reason with Idealism and with a low productivity in the natural sciences, and of the truth of senses with Materialism and with a high level of science, is found also in several other great cultures.
